Homecoming
by Russet022
Summary: Standing in the ruins of Gilneas, two friends find time to open up about the past...


A/N: So, I was reading one of the World of Warcraft novels, and realized that there were certain broad plot similarities between the worgen and the draenei... I probably own nothing. Blizzard, however, owns a small chunk of my soul...

Homecoming

The wall rose, massive and imposing, dividing the peninsula from the mainland. Tents were scattered at the base of the wall, the same tents on both sides. The wooden gates, so large they should have been impossible to break, hung twisted and shattered from their hinges. There was very little movement; the perpetual battle had slowed for a time. It would resume all too soon, neither side willing to surrender until every last opponent lay dead at the foot of the wall. Or, perhaps, until every last defendant had breathed his last, fighting gasp for breath.

It began to drizzle, softening the shape of the headland that swelled south of the battered, contested wall. Intermittent patrols ranged across the headland, but for the most part, the land was deserted, recovering from previous battles, and any movement was likely to go unseen, unchallenged, despite the war-movement like two hippogryphs, circling lower, offering perfect silhouettes. They were deliberate targets, but nothing took the bait.

The rolling headland, misty and dotted with the few slow sheep that had yet to fall prey to winter or foxes (or Forsaken), lay cool and green and utterly, achingly familiar to the rider who dropped recklessly low to land. Above, the other rider wheeled, searching for movement among the ruins. Then she swooped, not quite landing, and softly said, "I can't see anything. Shall I keep watch from the air?"

The other shook her head. "No, Jana, there's nothing here." Jana gave a delicate snort of disbelief, but landed anyway.

"Soph," she protested, "we are deep in enemy territory—"

"No," Sophrynia snapped again, a spark in her green eyes. "This is my home. It will never belong to _them_," she added in explanation, heavy derision coating her reference to the invaders.

For a long moment, neither companion spoke. Jana fidgeted, shifting the comforting weight of her staff from hand to hand, constantly turning to check behind her. She felt exposed; surely the Forsaken had set a watch on the wall, had seen the two brazenly fly in. Surely, despite the steadily strengthening drizzle, some patrol would come along the curve of the road and see (strange sight, even these days) a worgen and a draenei silhouetted in the mist. But Sophrynia was perfectly calm, eyes turned south towards the rising rooftops of her beloved city. (Strange, how they seemed to have changed places: the ancient draenei jittering like a youngling and the still somewhat feral worgen standing cool and unafraid.)

"Jana," Sophrynia said, placing a gentle, clawed hand on her friend's arm. "Those walking corpses reek of death and decay. I will smell them long before they will ever see us."

Jana swallowed, took a deep, calming breath—the scent of damp soil and fresh rain mingled with a faint hint of what must have been some sort of flower, borne on the wind. "Soph," she asked quietly, "what is that smell?"

Sophrynia's lips curled up in a worgen smile. "Gilnean roses," she said. "How I have missed that scent." A deep look of sadness settled over her face then, and Jana looked away, giving her friend time to gather herself. After a sufficient pause, Jana nodded her head, the tip of one of her swept horns pointing back to the gutted remains of a farmhouse.

"Is this," Jana paused as Sophrynia refocused on the present. "Is this where you used to live?"

Sophrynia shook her dark head, curved ears quivering with the movement. "I was a city girl," she said softly, adding gnomically, "but if those motherless Forsaken are watching anything, they will be watching Gilneas."

Jana frowned, turning south, her softly glowing eyes following the dim skyline of the darkened city. "But I thought...I had heard that the city was evacuated. That they all made it out."

Sophrynia's expression went blank. "Not everyone..." she growled.

Jana took half a step back, her hands lifted in a form of apology. But the worgen's anger was directed outward, across the headland, at the Forsaken invaders, or perhaps at the ferals who had first attacked, long before the undead fleet landed.

"I remember, Jana," Sophrynia continued in that same low growl. "The sounds, unrecognizable, on the roof, that I now know were the worgens' claws. The long snout, those glaring red eyes at the window, hands scrabbling at the panes..." She held up her own in demonstration, green eyes lost deep in memory. "I can still hear the growls, my brother's screams..."

Sophrynia risked a glance at Jana, who didn't quite meet the worgen's burning gaze. "We were taken by surprise. It," she hesitated. "It tore out his throat. I was no healer, not then, but even if I had been, it wouldn't have mattered. I was frozen. I can see it, claws raised and dripping—"

She stopped. Jana wanted to say something, but couldn't find the words. Sophrynia took a deep, snuffling breath, and continued, "Then the fighting began in the square. The thing must have heard something, because it paused. There was a knock at the door and I ran. Joined the prince, fighting in the streets. I became entangled in the...events. Got bitten for my efforts. I—"

There was a long moment of silence, the wind wafting the scent of roses around the pair. Jana glanced at her friend's pained face. "You change shape so easily, so often. You're more likely to be a cat than anything...Why are you still, you know, worgen-shaped? I would have thought, here, standing once again on Gilnean soil, you'd want to be...human."

Sophrynia snorted derisively. "Every time I see my reflection, I see the face of the enemy. I look at my hands..." Again, she lifted her clawed fingers, curling her hands into fists. "This is what I am, no matter how much I wish I could have changed what happened. I cannot go back."

Jana did not attempt to point out that coming to Gilneas, braving the Forsaken to stand in the past, seemed like a desperate plea to return to what Sophrynia said she could never find. Instead, Jana asked a question she had never quite dared to ask before.

"What was it like? Changing, I mean, that first time?"

Sophrynia shifted uncomfortably, blinked, frowned. "I don't remember. We were in the Cathedral. Everything went quiet. Then all hell broke loose and it hurt so much...I woke up in Duskhaven to find that the world had changed irrevocably. But there was no time to mourn. From the moment I began this life, I've been fighting, running, homeless." She laughed softly, sadly, drawing circles in the grass with the tip of her staff. "I'm still not much of a healer."

Jana reached over, taking Sophrynia's dark hand in her white one. She smiled sadly as well. "Neither am I."

The two turned, hand in hand, eyes once again seeking the dark bulk of the city. Jana didn't seem to see Gilneas, her faintly glowing eyes, difficult to read at the best of times, seemed to be looking out to some other, shining city, one the likes of which had never been seen on Azeroth. Quietly, Jana said, "I, too, know what it feels like to lose a home."

Sophrynia shot a disbelieving look at her. "What? Outland? That broken hulk of Legion dung—"

Jana pulled her hand away, turning northward, glaring at nothing. Sophrynia blinked in surprise at dark curls falling over the rigid, angry set of white shoulders and lifted a hand, but stopped short of touching her friend. It was so easy to forget that, despite appearances to the contrary, the draenei were quite long lived, that Jana was quite old, and rather a mystery. "I'm sorry—" Sophrynia began.

"You don't understand, Soph," Jana interrupted. "Draenor—Outland, to you—used to be this shining world. It was beautiful. We had our cities..." She shook her horned head. "And we ruined it. The Legion _followed_ us there. It was just another world in the long list of those destroyed...even Draenor was a replacement." She paused, took a deep, shaking breath.

"Long ago, we had a home. Argus, we called it. We few stood against the many, trusted to Velen, and we watched as our friends, families, willingly chose to become demons, pride and greed twisting them into man'ari..." Deep sadness filled her voice. "They turned on us, hunted us, never stopped or let us settle for long..."

Jana looked back over her shoulder. "We are not so different, Soph. I, too, have been fighting, running, homeless." She turned fully, and caught both of Sophrynia's hands in her own. "Would that I could see my world again. But it has long since been destroyed. Even so—" she paused again. "It has been so long, even if it were unchanged, perhaps I would not recognize it." She looked down, sighing.

Sophrynia pulled away this time, guilt flooding her. All this time, she'd been bitter about one small city! And Jana had said nothing, had followed her past enemy lines...Sophrynia knew that Jana had not meant to make her feel worse. It was simply a cry for companionship, concrete proof of the connection they had felt when they met, deep in the forests of Ashenvale, certain that the other, obscured in the darkness, was a Horde spy come to capture or kill...They both longed for an innocence and a time that could never be recovered.

She stepped back, lifting a hand to summon her hippogryph. "We should go," she said quietly. "It is dangerous to linger."

Casting wary glances at the surrounding headland, the two cautiously mounted and leapt into the air. Not three minutes later, clanking in from somewhere downwind, a Forsaken patrol stopped and argued over the significance of the wet claw marks and hoof prints fading in the grass. Probably just a sheep, and a fox. Probably nothing. One of the soldiers, slightly less brain-dead than the rest, glanced up, but all he could see were two—birds, yes—probably just two birds wheeling high above the dreary headland, drifting towards the wall.


End file.
